Lassie felt real life slipping from her, just as it always did when Alva talked. She was silent and thoughtful, even her new sensation in abeyance for the minute. Love was drawing back a step and letting Mercy have its hour.
"But if they deserved punishment?" she asked finally, in a timid voice.
"Perhaps they do deserve it, but not at my hands. If I, feeling as I do, suffered them to go down yet deeper into the pit, I should do a cruel wrong. I can't do such a wrong, I must do right in so far as I know how,—and it's their good luck to have met me just now." She smiled.
"Alva," said Lassie, kissing her, "that's a very new view to me. The evil-doers deserve to be punished, but others ought to be doing good; so on account of those others and on their account mainly we are taught forgiveness of sins;" she laughed softly.
Alva opened her eyes. "What a forward leap your intellect has taken this afternoon," she commented. "I never dreamed that Ronald was such a Jesuit. Come now, jump up, we must go down to supper."
"But you'll just tell me what Mrs. Ray said when she saw the paper."
"My dear, I really haven't asked."
"Oh, dear; then perhaps she took it calmly! Have you seen her since?"
"Yes, she took this afternoon to clean ants out of the government precincts. She seemed calm to me."
"Goodness! Then I'm glad that I went."